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Audit Objective

Determine whether Ontario County Four Seasons Development Corporation (Corporation) officials used a competitive process to procure goods and services.

Key Findings

Corporation officials did not always seek competition or maintain adequate documentation of purchasing processes when procuring goods and services.

• The Corporation's procurement policy (Policy) lacks a provision for sole source purchases and guidance for maintaining documentation to support that the purchasing process is followed.
• We reviewed payments totaling $305,033 to nine vendors with aggregate purchases of $5,000 or more in either the 2019-20 or 2020-21 fiscal year and found officials made purchases from two vendors totaling $58,375 without seeking competition.
• We reviewed payments totaling $298,044 to 13 professional services vendors and found officials did not follow a competitive process when selecting two professional service providers paid a total of $40,253 and did not document the rationale for the process that was followed.

Key Recommendations

• Adopt a more comprehensive written procurement policy which includes the requirements for adequate documentation to be maintained to support purchasing processes, and ensure the policy is consistently followed.

Corporation officials agreed with our recommendations and have initiated or indicated they planned to initiate corrective action.